Sunday 1st February 2015
Culion Town
11.53.246N
120.01.497E
Depth – 19.2
Yes!
We have left
Coron!
We are moored near
a very pretty little town on Culion Island.
The leper colony beckons – that is an adventure for today!
A kindly boatload
of local men brought our fuel out in a big blue Seadive dinghy in the
morning. It took the three of them about
two hours to decant it into the tanks – I am SO happy Pete and I didn’t try to
do it ourselves. The sun is particularly
hot today; we would have been two very sorry tomatoheads had we done it
ourselves!
We did other jobs
on board. I was very sad to remove our
once-proud Philippines flag from the halyard…
I haven’t been
able to find a new one in the shops.
People here are nowhere near as patriotic and flag-waving as they are in
just about every country we have visited thus far.
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| 2XS on the move! |
It is only about
16 nautical miles from Coron to Culion, and it was a beautiful trip. NOT uneventful…what could possibly go
wrong?? Well first of all the port motor
immediately got very hot. Pete had to clamber
down into the engine hold to investigate while I manoevred the boat between the
reefs and towards Culion. The problem
was – barnacles blocking the outlet pipe…Pete knocked them out with a screwdriver
but it wasn’t easy, or fun, down here in the hot hot hold.
And next in our
litany of woes – the brand new depth sounder (I refused to take a photo of it
because I was so cross with it) just didn’t work. It gave very random and incorrect readings
all the way to Culion. Pete wearily
disconnected it and re-connected the old one, which sometimes works. It chose a
good moment to behave well and we were able to navigate around Culion Town
without too much anxiety.
We followed a nice
big banka called Barbara 5, and picked up a mooring right next to it. Yes maybe the mooring belongs to another boat
– Barbara 6?? – but some cheery chaps in a dinghy waved happily and make OK
gestures so with a bit of luck we can stay here while we do our sightseeing trip.
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| Culion sunset |
Thank heavens you keep all the old parts. I hope all of your readers appreciate the hideousness of the engine room in that climate!
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